As the world watches, change begins at China's tech factories

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One day last summer, Pu Xiaolan was halfway through a shift inspecting iPad cases when she received a beige wooden chair with white stripes and a high, sturdy back.

At first, Pu wondered if someone had made a mistake. But when her bosses walked by, they nodded curtly. So Pu gently sat down and leaned back. Her body relaxed.

The rumors were true.

When Pu was hired at this Foxconn plant a year earlier, she received a short, green plastic stool that left her unsupported back so sore that she could barely sleep at night. Eventually, she was promoted to a wooden chair, but the backrest was much too small to lean against. The managers of this 164,000-employee factory, she surmised, believed that comfort encouraged sloth.

But in March, unbeknown to Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn's top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging changes. Foxconn, China's largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers' hours and significantly increase wages – changes that, if fully carried out this year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say.

The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based.

Executives at companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Intel say those shifts have convinced many electronics companies that they must also overhaul how they interact with foreign plants and workers – often at a cost to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, probably not so much as to affect consumer prices.

Even with these reforms, chronic problems remain at overseas factories. Many laborers still work illegal overtime and some employees' safety remains at risk, according to interviews and reports published by advocacy organizations.

AN INSPECTOR'S PUSH

“This is a disgrace!” shouted Terry Gou, founder and chairman of Foxconn, the world's largest electronics manufacturer and Apple's most important industrial partner.

It was March of last year and Gou – seen by activists as a longtime obstacle to improving conditions inside his factories – was meeting with his top deputies in Shenzhen, China. In January, The New York Times published a series of articles detailing problems at factories producing Apple products, ranging from excessive overtime and underage workers to sometimes deadly hazards. An explosion in Pu's Foxconn plant had killed four workers.

In January, Apple publicly released the names of many of its suppliers for the first time. Additionally, the company made the unusual move of joining the Fair Labor Association, one of the largest workplace monitoring groups. Auditors from that association were soon inspecting Apple's partners in China, starting with Foxconn.

Now, Gou was learning the results of those examinations. Foxconn was still failing to stop illegal overtime, the association's lead inspector told Gou and his lieutenants, according to multiple people with knowledge of the meeting. The company was failing to keep student interns off night shifts. Foxconn had not put sufficient safety policies into practice and had exposed potentially hundreds of thousands of workers to at least 43 violations of Chinese laws and regulations.

But the inspector was not done.

He turned to the only Apple executive in the room, the senior vice president for operations, Jeff Williams. Apple needed to change as well, the inspector said. Apple, to its credit, had been working for years to improve conditions in overseas factories, but the company was treating such problems too much like engineering puzzles, the inspector said.

When Williams, who declined to comment for this article, returned from that March meeting to California, changes began.

A MORE HUMAN TOUCH

Almost 200 miles southeast of the factory where Pu received her new chair is another plant that is experimenting with improving workers' quality of life – and shows the trade-offs of such gains.

The factory, in Chongqing, makes computers for Hewlett-Packard, a company with little of Apple's glamour. It is operated by Quanta, a little-known Taiwanese manufacturer.

Inside the plant, amid thousands of workers in bright white uniforms, are occasional flashes of pink worn by people like Zhang Xuemei, a bubbly 19-year-old with glinting earrings whose sole job is to chat with co-workers.

For eight hours a day, Zhang collects complaints about the factory's free meals and dorms. She listens to workers who are divorcing, homesick or arguing with managers. When she finds someone suffering, she refers them to the company's full-time doctor or professional counselors.

Quanta's 10-story dormitories feel like a college campus. There is a free movie theater, television rooms, a large martial arts gym, two spacious karaoke bars, a huge cafeteria and an aerobics hall playing a Chinese remix of “Gangnam Style.”

CHANGE IS HARD

Hewlett-Packard also makes products at Foxconn factories, as does almost every major electronics firm. Foxconn, more than any other company, has proved that Chinese plants can deliver obsessive attention to quality. The company has helped make China into a manufacturing juggernaut through strict discipline that is visible everywhere, from the salutes employees give visiting executives to morning calisthenics for workers.

That discipline, say former Apple executives, is one reason every iPhone is put together so well.

It is also one reason the changes enjoyed by employees like Pu – who received the new chair – have not spread quickly. Although Foxconn has trained managers to treat employees more gently, foremen still use profanity and intimidation, workers say.

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